Spider's Face
by Irhaboggle
Summary: Rotti sits alone in his office, grinning with a chilling malice. It pleases him that he is so powerful and revered. It pleases him that his deceit has spread across the world like a spider's web. But most of all, it pleases Rotti that his name alone can strike terror into any heart that still beats! His fingers spread across the globe like spider legs, ensnaring anything they can.


"There's a world outside of these crumbling walls where the weak men hide and do battles and brawls," Rotti Largo muttered to himself as he peered out his office window to survey the barren, broken streets of his kingdom below. Although it was dark, and he was too high up to see anything on the ground clearly, the old miser still knew what was going on below and could already imagine it. He could see graverobbers, GeneCops, junkies, victims, crooks, and more, rolling around the mud and blood, fighting each other and themselves for a scrap of life anywhere on those nightmarish streets. It made him grin to watch them struggle just to survive.

"And the only pride is the spider that crawls into the cracks and calmly waits for the flies to realize, as they're sitting in the shit and dirt, that their heads all ache and their bellies all hurt," he continued, thinking about how all those foolish, useless idiots down there would finally come to their senses in time and realize that they were dying. Even if the symptoms were neither urgent nor obvious, they were all dying of something. It just took a bit of time for the moronic crowd to realize it. But when they did realize it? They'd come flocking to his golden gates, asking him, their savior, for a bit of redemption and grace.

"And there's nothing that can save neither drain nor skirt, for the disease has proven fatal, it's spreading!" Rotti continued gleefully as he pressed his nose against the window overlooking his little world. He could just see it now! His manufactured disease literally flying through the air and filling up the bodies of all of his subjects. They didn't know what was going on, but he did...

"And I will generously give, and I promise all the flies that they all shall live!" he grinned to himself as the GeneCo blimp circled around. At the moment, it was advertising new, faster, bigger, better stronger hearts. It was a strategy of such economic brilliance that he was the richest man on the whole planet before anyone had bought so much as a single organ from his company. To poison the world for cheap and then offer a cure for cost was the best and fastest way to ensure a bank account that could never, ever be rivaled across all of time and space.

"And though the cost of a drop of the cure is dear, how the penny doth flow when it's death they fear!" the old man continued to cackle as he thought about the overall greed of humanity. The news might accuse him of being the devil incarnate, and being greedier than all the misers and geezers in the world combined, but it was not he who was throwing away every last penny he had on more and more cosmetic surgeries. The real greedy ones were all of GeneCo's hungry customers.

"And I cast my web so prodigiously wide that I snared the whole sniveling world inside and the lot that couldn't pay, well they bloody died!" Rotti continued as an alarm behind him began to beep gently. He was not concerned. He knew that all it meant was that another organ payment had gone default. He also knew that one of his Repo Men would've gotten the same alarm sound... "But that's all for the best!" he declared. "It keeps a terror in the rest, for you fear the man that can save your life, and your bastard child, and your blithering wife! And the petty little people with their petty strife!" Rotti stepped away from the window, shaking his head in dark amusement as he thought about all the poor, unfortunate souls that had ever come crying to him, willing to sign their very lives away for his cure. He'd seen desperate men, terrified women, broken children, and angry crowds all clamoring to him for life when they were on death's door.

"So have a cough? Have a chair!" he told his invisible guest. "For the spider's there! And the spider sees how to bring them all in line! How to keep them very quiet, how to herd the swine!" he chuckled to himself. This was where all of his operatic talents came to great use. Nothing settled the masses like a good performance, no matter how dismal everything else in their lives were. He knew how to keep the masses in check because he knew how to keep them happy. All it took was a few good things here and there and it would never even occur to them to rebel against him. But it wasn't just the bones that Rotti occasionally threw to his mongrel kingdom that kept them all happy and subdued. It was also their immense fear of death, and their belief that he was the god of life who could save and protect them all from the vicious, viral onslaught. "Though the cost of the drop of the cure is dear, how the penny doth flow when it's death they fear!"

But what did Rotti love most of all about GeneCo and the way his business worked? What did he love even more than the money or the deceit? The power or control? The spectacle or the precision? The fame or adoration?

"And now the spider thinks, 'what a glorious game', and it's not the gold and it's not the fame, it's the fear that fools are feeling when they praise his name! For in their prayers, they'll say, 'he who gives can take away'!" that was what Rotti loved most of all. It was the raw terror he could strike into the hearts of anyone, just by being himself. He had the whole world convinced he was literally a god (if not THE God) and he knew that some of them DID literally pray to him, and he knew that when they did, it was with fear and reverence.

And such an instance did not only extend to his pathetic customers, but even to his own employees up to, and including, the Repo Men themselves. And even Rotti's own children were not free or safe from him. They were ALL caught in Rotti's web! But funniest of all was that...

"They never ask, not in any last case, where this plague came from in the very first place. And the spider smiles with a spider's GRAAAAACE!" Rotti paused, operatic note echoing in his stuffy little office, then he continued speaking again, voice dark and twisted with malevolent glee. "For he knows when all humanity for centuries to come envisions God, they will see... the spider's face!" and Rotti smiled, a sickening sight.

**AN: Once again, EA produces a very Repo song (the first being "Scavenger"). But seriously, tell me I'm not the only one to hear this song being sung by Rotti! Stockhill is basically a Rotti-type after all! **


End file.
